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Friday, January 10, 2014

Dear Mr. Connor...

I would personally like to thank you.

You've taught me a very valuable lesson and reengaged my interest in a particular area that is affecting every single student that enters our schools.

Last night, your school district Superintendent posted via Twitter that school would be in session the next day... (many schools in the St. Louis area have been closed all week due to #snowpocalypse2014).

Your district Superintendent was also kind enough to send a tweet immediately before the school open/close announcement saying simply 'that just because an idea pops in your head doesn't mean you should share it with the world.'

What you posted via Twitter back to your Superintendent is really not important, but what is important, is that it was extremely inappropriate and frankly shocking to me.

My immediate response...

Now, Mr. Connor, would your tirade have ended with one simple misdirected tweet, that would have been one thing, however it continued for several more tweets.

I felt the need to say something, Mr. Connor, since you weren't understanding the levity of the situation...

**For the record, I don't believe expulsion is even remotely close to the best option in this situation... just want to make that clear.

As you can see Mr. Connor, my tweet got quite a few retweets and favorites by mostly your peers. The tweet was going viral in our little neck of the woods so to speak.

Within 10 minutes Mr. Connor, you had deleted all the inappropriate tweets, you had changed your Twitter profile picture, and you had changed your Twitter account to 'protected.'

Obviously at this stage you must have realized you made a mistake.

Now, here's the deal Mr. Connor, you've demonstrated to me and MANY others the importance of teaching digital citizenship within our school curricula. It's exchanges and events like this that can have a lasting and devastating impact on a prospective college student or prospective job applicant such as yourself.

Mr. Connor, learn from this event and please know that what might seem like nothing, can quickly turn into something much bigger and far greater in a short period of time.

Mr. Connor, I honestly believe you've learned a valuable lesson, and I wish you all the luck in helping others to learn this lesson the easy way, and not the hard way...

Agora: Collaborative Classroom

Disclaimer

"Life of an Educator" is the personal blog of Justin Tarte. Here I will share my thoughts on education in an effort to improve schools by helping Educators to reflect upon their current practices and beliefs. The opinions expressed here represent my own and may or may not represent those of my current employer.